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[Harley Jacobson]

This message was self-deleted by its author (Harley Jacobson) on Mon Sep 3, 2012, 11:58 AM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[brewens]

1. I wouldn't be surprised. They assasinated Pat Tillman. n/t

[Dont call me Shirley]

14. And Stephanie Tubbs, Congresswoman from Ohio who was investigating

the 2004 election fraud. And Paul Wellstone. And JFK Jr. And.......

[november3rd]

44. Her too?

They assassinated Stephanie Tubbs? How? I thought sh just lost her seat or something.

[ailsagirl]

71. I thought that Stephanie Tubbs died of an aneurysm

[Jennicut]

73. She did. She was never murdered by anyone.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

2. What about Wellstone in 2002 as well?

[Zoeisright]

31. Yes. And that isn't a joke.

[brewens]

46. No joke with Tillman either. Their poster boy for the war on terror wasn't keeping his mouth shut

about what he felt was an illegal war. His coming back and and raising hell about it had to be scaring Bush's people. People would have listened to him. Who in this country had more room to talk that that guy? He walked away from millions to join up and be a ranger.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/web/COM1048409/index.htm

[russspeakeasy]

3. I vote yes.

Do you need t o see my papers ?

[annabanana]

4. I wouldn't blink

if they were ALL nailed on Rove. Ends justifying means knows no limits for this crowd.

[bbgrunt]

5. k and r. it is important to keep this whole mess in the collective conscious.

[SoapBox]

6. Didn't KKKarl just want to kill off Akin?

...oh ya, KKKarl "apologized" for the remark.

TurdBlossom needs a big dose of Weed-Be-Gone.

[freshwest]

7. Very interesting speculation. Absolute power.

[elleng]

8. Yes

[fascisthunter]

9. Um, yes... but the timing is interesting

[Live and Learn]

10. I think so.

I certainly wouldn't put it past him. He certainly should have been thoroughly investigated.

[Sanity Claws]

11. He threatened Akin the other day

He'd do it to any one, any thing that gets in his way

[INdemo]

12. I was surprised to see

www.rovecybergate.com

is still up and operating

[zeemike]

13. But that is not how it works.

Rove never told anyone to have him whacked....just like the mob boss never tells anyone to whack someone.
The boss just expresses his displeasure with that person to a certain person....and that certain person gets the job done as a favor to the boss...knowing full well the boss will reward him.
Rove would just have to say "that guy is causing so much trouble, I wish he would go away"....and go away he does....and Rove is no where near it.

[DBoon]

58. "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"

Four knights heard what Henry had shouted and took it to mean that the king wanted Becket dead. They rode to Canterbury to carry out the deed. The knights were Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracey, Hugh de Morville and Richard le Breton. On December 29th 1170 they killed Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. After killing him, one of the knights said "Let us away. He will rise no more."

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/thomas_becket.htm

Though comparing Rove to Henry II is probably blasphemy.

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. Rove is not dumb enough to make jokes about anyone who might end up dead.

He is a very very smart person, very devious. Too bad he is on the dark side.

[harris8]

16. Yes

[AnnieK401]

17. This is scary

So in other words, two men that Rove had reason to wish gone died mysteriously in plane crashes?

[NV Whino]

18. I'd love to see Rove in prison…

In Texas. If you catch my drift.

[drmeow]

86. No - in pink shorts and a tent in AZ! eom

[chuckstevens]

19. Connell's Widow

Someone needs to interview Connell's widow. If anyone can shed light on this, she can. I really wish that after 2000 in Florida, 2004 in Ohio, Valerie Plame, the Us Attorney's scandal, Connell, and Don Sieglemann, someone could finally nail this little fuck to the wall and throw away the key. Rove is truly a treasonous pig and pathological liar.

[whistler162]

20. He also did in Amelia Earhart and Joe Crater

[mysuzuki2]

21. And who killed Roger Rabbit?

Hmmmm?

[OccupyUnmasked]

22. Not Rove himself

Connell's death has ALWAYS just stunk to high heaven. We are too busy with current stuff to excavate this one, too. Glad someone else has long term memory of it.

[DURHAM D]

35. Who exactly is "we" ?

[Pilotguy]

23. Conspiracy Theory Nonsense

Here's the NTSB Accident Report:

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20081223X12815&ntsbno=CEN09FA099&akey=1

Mike Connell was a relatively inexperienced pilot who flew into weather conditions that were beyond his ability to handle. The probable cause listed in the NTSB report:

The pilot’s inappropriate control inputs as a result of spatial disorientation, which led to an aerodynamic stall and loss of control. Contributing to the accident were the pilot's decision to conduct flight into known icing conditions, ice accumulation that reduced the airplane's aerodynamic performance, and the pilot's failure to initially intercept and establish the airplane on the proper approach course.

[Harley Jacobson]

24. Wrong. Connell was a HIGHLY experienced pilot.

Mike Connell was a highly experienced pilot:
http://archive.truthout.org/122408J

"We're told that his plane was running out of gas, which is a little bit odd for a highly experienced pilot like Connell, but apparently, when the plane went down, there was an explosion, a fireball that actually charred and pocked some of the house fronts in the neighborhood. People can go online and see the footage that news crews took. But beyond the, you know, dubiousness of the official story, we have to take a close look at - and a serious look at all the charges that Connell was set to make."

[Pilotguy]

32. No he wasn't...

...at the time of the accident he had accumulated between 500-600 total flight hours. In no way can that be considered "highly experienced". And I'm not sure where the "running out of fuel" story came from but that is just not true. He didn't communicate to air traffic control that he was running out of fuel and the post crash fire would indicate he was not out of fuel.

[creeksneakers2]

33. Connell wasn't about to reveal anything

He'd already testified weeks earlier and said he didn't know anything about rigged elections. There were no more subpoenas, nothing.

[Harley Jacobson]

34. he was told not to say anything....

read the maxim article.

[leveymg]

76. Not so experienced that he didn't stall his aircraft on approach due to icing.

That was what preliminary NTSB report indicated.

[juajen]

26. Yep, there is always a reasonable explanation

Don't you suppose that knowing how diabolical and vicious these people are, that he would have take precautions. Too damn convenient.

[Hugabear]

28. KKKarl Rove appreciates your support

Your concern is noted.

[Pilotguy]

40. And your lunacy is noted.

[jaysunb]

41. Who was running the NTSB at the time ?

I don't do " but there's something very suspicious here.

[Pilotguy]

47. The NTSB is a

five member board. I guess they were all in on the cover-up.

[jaysunb]

54. I did'nt suggest a cover-up by the board.

Their job is to distill the information provided by the investigative team. That's where the problem lies...for me at least.

[Harley Jacobson]

25. The ENTIRE Article from Maxim Magazine - 2010

The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru

Maxim - 2010

Shortly before six o’clock on the evening of December 19, 2008, a man standing outside his home in Lake Township, Ohio heard the whine of an engine in the sky above him.

Moments later two red lights broke through the low clouds, heading almost directly toward the ground. It was a light aircraft, and for a second, as it descended below the tree line, the man thought it would climb back up. Instead, there was a terrible thud, and the sky turned orange. When the fire crews arrived, they found the burning wreckage of a Piper Saratoga strewn across a vacant lot. The plane had narrowly missed a house, but the explosion was so intense that the home’s plastic siding was on fire. So was the grass. The pilot had been thrown from the plane and died instantly. Body parts and pieces of twisted metal were scattered everywhere. A prayer book lay open on the ground, its pages on fire.


The crash would have remained a private tragedy confined to the pages of the local press and the hearts of the pilot’s widow and four children, but within days the blogosphere was abuzz with rumors and conspiracy theories: The plane, it was said, had been sabotaged and the pilot murdered to cover up the GOP’s alleged theft of the Ohio vote in the 2004 presidential election. At the center of this plot was the Saratoga’s pilot, a prodigiously gifted IT expert named Michael Connell, whose altar boy charm and technical brilliance had made him the computer whiz of choice for the Republican Party. Left-wing Web sites openly referred to Connell as “Bush’s vote rigger” and claimed that his fingerprints were on all the most controversial elections in recent history. There were dark whispers of electronic pulses or sniper fire being used to bring down the plane—a black ops attack designed to keep him from testifying against his former cronies. Right-wing bloggers and talk show hosts derided such claims as the twisted delusions of liberal nut jobs and tinfoil hatters. The mainstream press sat on its hands.

But while the rumors, innuendos, and allegations continue to swirl through the ether, evidence has recently emerged that suggests the Ohio vote may have been hacked, and that Connell was involved.

Born in 1963 in Peoria, Illinois into a large Irish-American family, Michael Connell was a lifelong Republican and a devout Roman Catholic who went to Mass every day and wore a wristband saying what would jesus do? What Connell did was realize the potential of the Internet to shape politics. While still in his 20s, he worked as finance director for Republican Congressman Jim Leach, and as director of voter programs for Senator Dan Coats of Indiana. In 1988 Connell developed a voter contact database for George H. W. Bush, thus inaugurating a long association with the Bush family: Connell worked on Jeb’s gubernatorial campaign in Florida in 1998; two years later he was the chief architect of George W. Bush’s Web site as Dubya launched his bid for the White House.

But it was while serving as tech guru to Karl Rove that Connell developed his deepest and perhaps most problematic professional relationship. Recruited in the late ’80s, Connell became Rove’s most trusted cyberlieutenant: a Web wizard who could turn portals into power and who would gain access to the very heights of American politics by the time he reached 30 years old. Connell’s two Ohio-based companies, New Media Communications and GovTech, became virtual research and development labs for the Republican Party, building and managing Web sites and e-mail accounts for both Presidents Bush and a long list of leading Republicans. GovTech also designed and managed numerous Congressional IT systems, including those for the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, putting Connell “behind 
the fire wall” of some of the most sensitive gov--ernment Web sites from the safety of the Bush White House.

“Mike was known as the GOP’s Mister Fix-It,” says Stephen Spoonamore, an IT security expert and friend of Connell’s. “He built really intelligent tools that allowed people who wanted to win elections do a better job organizing their data.” But aside from his more legitimate business, Connell was no stranger to the darker side of American politics. He was forced to resign from Senator Coats’ campaign for his involvement in ethical violations. Connell’s was also the hand behind the Web site for the notorious Swift Boat Veterans’ for Truth smear campaign against John Kerry and GWB43.com, the secret e-mail account used by Rove and dozens of other White House staffers.

Just six weeks before his death, Connell had given a deposition in an Ohio lawsuit that accused Rove, Bush, and Co. of something far more serious than merely scrubbing e-mails: the theft of the 2004 Ohio vote. “This is the biggest scandal in our history,” says Mark Crispin Miller, a professor at New York University who has written extensively about electronic voter fraud. “Watergate grew out of a paranoid attempt to disable the opposition. But Ohio was exponentially different. We’re talking about a systematic, centralized attempt to rig the voting system.”

“We decided to try to bring a racketeering claim against Rove under Ohio law,” says Cliff Arnebeck, the attorney who brought the suit, a broad-shouldered man with a Senatorial air dressed in a blue blazer. “We detected a pattern of criminal activity, and we identified Connell as a key witness, as the implementer for Rove.”





By any calculation, the Ohio 2004 election was a black day for American democracy. Lou Harris, known as the “father of modern political polling,” and a man not given to hyperbole, called it “as dirty an election as America has ever seen.” All the exit polls suggested Ohio would go to Kerry. But when the vote was counted George Bush had won by 132,685 votes, adding Ohio’s crucial 20 Electoral College votes to his tally. And putting him, not Kerry, into the White House. It has since been alleged that at several points on election night, the Ohio secretary of state’s official Web site, which was responsible for reporting the results, was being hosted by a server in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Ohio’s secretary of state in 2004 was a fiercely partisan Christian named Ken Blackwell. Blackwell had hired a company called GDC Limited to run the IT systems, which had subcontracted the job to Michael Connell’s company, GovTech. Connell had in turn sub-contracted SMARTech, an IT firm based in Chattanooga, to act, it was claimed, as a backup server.

“By looking at the URLs on the Web site, we discovered that there were three points on election night when SMARTech’s computers took over from the secretary of state,” says Arnebeck. “It is during that period that we believe votes were manipulated.”

In computer jargon it is known as a man-in-the-middle attack.

“At the time I didn’t know who SMARTech were,” says IT expert Stephen Spoonamore, opening a file on his computer showing the Internet architecture map of the 2004 Ohio election. He points to a red box in the bottom right-hand corner showing SMARTech’s server.

“Then I found out: They host Rove’s e-mails. They host the RNC’s Web site. They host George Bush’s Web site.” His voice rises in disbelief.

“I go, ‘Holy shit, this is a man-in-the-middle attack! These guys have programmed the state’s computers to talk to a company with ties 
to the Republican Party.’ It’s brilliant.”

With his wiry hair and designer glasses, Spoonamore looks like a character in a Tim Burton movie. A lifelong Republican, he is also one of the world’s acknowledged experts on cybersecurity, with a résumé that includes work for the U.S. armed forces and the FBI. In his spare time he has devoted thousands of hours to investigating cyberfraud in American elections. “I know I sound crazy when I talk about this stuff. No one wants to believe it. They say, ‘No one would steal an elec--tion.’ And I go, ‘Yeah, they would. And that’s exactly what they did.’ ”

Spoonamore believes that while Michael Connell may have facilitated electoral fraud, he was really just a tool of more powerful forces. “Mike has been called the Forrest Gump of GOP IT operations,” he says. “And I think there’s a truth to that. I think he was a good guy surrounded by wolves. He was always going to be the fall guy.”

The two men had gotten to know each other at Spoonamore’s Washington, D.C. offices in late 2005. “The two of us hit it off,” recalls Spoonamore. “We were the same age, the same generation. We had a lot of friends in common.” At the end of the meeting, Connell broached a delicate topic. “Mike asked me, ‘How easy is it to destroy all records of e-mail?’ ” recalls Spoonamore. “He sort of gestured toward the White House and said, ‘Because I have clients down the street who are working on that problem.’ And I stepped back and said, ‘If you are talking about White House e-mail destruction, I want nothing to do with it.’ ”

A year later, at an IT conference in London, Spoonamore confronted the pro-life Connell about the Ohio election: “He said, ‘I’m afraid that in my zeal to save the babies, the system I built may have been abused.’ ”

Three days later, in the back of a cab heading toward the airport, Spoonamore asked Connell if he would be willing to talk to a Congressional judiciary committee about what he knew. “I actually took Mike’s hand and said, ‘If I can arrange for a private meeting for you to sit down with the committee and explain what you think may have happened in 2004 and how your systems may have been abused, will you do it?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ ”

Connell never did talk to the judiciary committee. But in the months leading up to his death he was under intense pressure. In an attempt to extricate himself from the world of politics, he had sold two of his businesses, including GovTech. Throughout the fall his plane was being tracked by Arnebeck and his associates so they could serve him with a subpoena. Connell sought refuge from the maelstrom in his deep Catholic faith. He took to wearing a scapular, two squares of cloth with religious images favored by devout Catholics, under his shirt. He went to Mass twice a day and became more directly involved with the pro-life movement, spending weekends standing outside abortion clinics. He traveled to Burma and Thailand to work with religious dissidents and started a Catholic charity in El Salvador.

Finally, on October 8, 2008, Connell was served with his subpoena at College Park Airfield outside Washington, D.C. Seven weeks later his Piper Saratoga would fall from the sky.





On December 18, Connell flew to D.C. to meet with the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s organization, about starting a new branch and rebuilding their Web site. He stayed the night at a hotel, got up early to attend Mass and then a breakfast meeting. At about 11 a.m., Connell went to College Park Airfield to prepare to fly home to Akron. His firm, New Media Communication, was holding its Christmas party that evening, and he didn’t want to miss it. An experienced pilot with more than 500 hours of flight time under his belt, Connell waited for the weather to clear. Shortly after 3:30 p.m., he called his wife, Heather, in Ohio to say he had his “window.” He took off at 3:51 p.m.

At first everything went fine. On his approach to Akron-Canton Regional Airport, he asked the tower if there were any reports of icing and was told there were not. It was certainly dark and cold, with cloud cover at 1,000 feet, but the plane had a sophisticated autopilot system that would normally bring it onto the runway, like a homing pigeon. But at 3,200 feet, as Connell began his descent, air traffic control radioed to say he was off course by several miles. Connell radioed that he would correct his position. Something seemed to be wrong with the lateral controls.

The audiotapes of Connell’s last communications with the tower suggest a rising sense of panic and confusion. Realizing that he is still off course, he asks to do a 360-degree turn “to reestablish ourselves.” It’s an unusual maneuver at this late stage of the approach, and the flight controller denies the request. Instead, he advises Connell to “climb and maintain 3,000 feet.” Seconds later there is a loud rushing sound as the cockpit bursts open and the engine goes haywire. Connell screams, “Nine nine November declaring an emergency!” Out of respect for his religious beliefs—and his children—the tower reported that his last words were, “Oh, God!” In fact, he cries out, “Oh, fuck!” Then the tape goes dead.
Capt. Lorin Geisner of the Greentown Fire Department was the first person to arrive at the scene. “We received a 911 call, so we contacted the tower and asked what size plane it was and how many souls were on board,” he recalls. “But we were informed that the tower was in lockdown and that no information was available.”

According to sources, there were other anomalies. Normally, a night crash scene would be roped off and investigated in daylight. In this case representatives of the NTSB and FAA used light towers to photograph and document the scene. Connell’s plane was hastily removed to a secure hangar under cover of darkness. By 6 a.m. the investigators had vanished, leaving behind them a trail of debris, and one very angry widow.

“How is this OK?” asks Heather Connell, pulling a chunk of metal from a cardboard box she had brought in from the garage. She is kneeling on the floor of her husband’s basement office, a tidy space decorated with sleek black office furniture. A photo of a 25-year-old Connell with George H. W. Bush sits on the bookshelf next to an action figure of Dubya decked out in fighter pilot garb. A cascade of frizzy blonde hair tumbles forward over Heather’s face. Her eyes are red from crying. “They think this is part of the foot pedal.”

When I ask how she met her husband, she starts to hum the ’80s hit “Don’t You Want Me.” “She was working as waitress in a cocktail bar...” Then her voice falters. “That much is true. We met in Indiana. He was working for Senator Coats, and I was going to college and working at a sports bar. He was with a bunch of interns who came in. I carded every one of them and was in the process of kicking him out of the bar.” She gives a throaty chuckle. “He was used to people fawning over him, and I think he liked me because I was mean.”

“I didn’t go to the crash site on the night he died,” she says, picking another piece of debris from the box. As her husband began his final descent, Heather and the rest of the staff gathered at a restaurant for the company’s annual Christmas party. “I got a message that his plane had landed,” she recalls, choking back tears. “So I kept calling and calling.” She winces at the memory. “This is making me sick again.” Leaning back in her chair, she takes a drag of a cigarette. “They told me the plane had crashed and that he was dead, but I didn’t 
want to believe it. I thought maybe he was on the way to the hospital, so I didn’t go to the crash site until December 26.” Her left nostril spasms. “I have pieces of my husband’s brain!” she cries. “I picked them up with my hands six days after the crash. Chunks of his skin and internal organs. How is that a proper investigation? How is that acceptable? How dare they leave pieces of my husband lying there!”

She pulls out another storage box filled with personal items from the crash site: $50 in cash; a charred prayer book with a note inside it reading, “I love you”; a Mickey Mouse dollar bill. Something important is missing, though. “Why do I have his earpiece?” she asks, pulling out the Jawbone headset of a BlackBerry. “This was in his backpack. And the backpack was zipped. So where’s his phone?”

“He always clips them next to each other,” interjects her 15-year-old daughter, Lauren. It’s an important detail because it suggests that the BlackBerry may have been intentionally removed from the backpack. On it were hundreds, if not thousands, of sensitive files and e-mails relating to Karl Rove and the Bush administration.

“I want to know where my husband’s phone is,” Connell says angrily. “It’s my responsibility as a mother and a spouse to find out what happened. And I will not accept ‘Cause of crash unknown.’ I will not.”
Though she is furious at the NTSB, she has no time for the conspiracy theories. While she admits that Connell was disillusioned with politics, she bridles at any suggestion that he could have been involved with vote rigging. “With Mike there was religion, family, and a love for democracy,” she says firmly. “He would never interfere with the democratic process. That’s just ridiculous.”

Connell’s younger sister isn’t so sure. “I knew he worked for the Bushes,” says Shannon Connell. The two siblings had diametrically opposed views—Shannon Connell is a pro-Obama liberal—but they never allowed this to come between them. “We stayed close despite the political differences. He was my brother.”

She doesn’t know whether Connell helped steal elections. If he did, she says, it was because of his passionate anti-abortion views. “I think he was convinced he was doing good—to save the babies,” she says. “That’s the only thing my sisters and I can come up with.

“Mike had been deposed, but he hadn’t been called as a witness yet,” she says of the possibility that her brother was murdered. “He was incredibly loyal to the people he worked for, but he would never have lied under oath. For want of a better expression, I think they played him. His death would have been a really nice Christmas present for Rove and Cheney.

“I am beyond looking for justice,” she says, resigned. “I just want the truth to be known. But I am not counting on it.” She may be right.

After more than nine months, the factual report into Connell’s crash had still not been made public. According to an NTSB spokesperson, it was “still being reviewed.” That’s scant comfort 
to Connell’s family, who just want some sense of closure, whatever the outcome.
Still, “In my mind and my heart,” says Shannon Connell, “I am convinced he was murdered.”

We may never know the truth about Connell’s last flight, but contracts between Connell’s company, GovTech, and Ken Blackwell’s administration establish a credible scenario for electoral fraud and place Connell at the scene of the alleged crime.

Among other things, the contracts contradict Connell’s sworn testimony that SMARTech, in Chattanooga, merely acted as a backup site for election data.

The contracts, signed in March 2004, show that SMARTech was specifically tasked with creating a “mirror site” to manage election night results.“What this means is that Connell’s company was on both sides of the mirror,” explains Stephen Spoonamore. “And that the votes of the people of Ohio were in the control of a fiercely partisan IT company (SMARTech) and operating out of another state.”

Clouding matters further is the persistent specter of paranoid conspiracy that has enveloped the case from the beginning. In September 2009, an anonymous letter was sent to the FBI in Ohio and five other addressees, including Heather Connell. “Enclosed is a document that is not meant to exist,” begins the anonymous writer. Included is what purports to be an “after action report” by a black ops agent. All names have been redacted, but the report provides a detailed time log of actions taken to install an AMD (microprocessor) in the engine of Connell’s plane at College Park Airfield in D.C. the night before he made his fatal last flight. Connell himself is not mentioned by name. Just the registration number of his plane, NP299N, which the agent confirms he had been sent to “neutralize.” The letter accompanying the report is headed MICHAEL CONNELL, HOMICIDE. It ends with the words: “Connell was not NST (national security threat).”

While skeptics may be tempted to dismiss these documents as the ingenious work of a hoaxer intent on pouring gasoline on the bonfire of conspiracy theories already surrounding Connell, 
a number of experts from the intelligence community who have seen the document believe it to be genuine.
In early November, the NTSB finally released its factual report into Connell’s crash. The report concludes that tests carried out on the plane’s engine, flight control, and autopilot systems revealed “no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.”

A spokeswoman for the NTSB confirmed that the organization had received a copy of the anonymous letter, but would not say whether its claims were being looked into. “We’re investigating the accident,” she says, “not any possible criminal activity.” She adds that the NTSB forwarded the letter to the FBI in Cleveland. When asked to confirm this, Scott Wilson at the FBI’s Cleveland bureau, says, “The only thing I can say is...I can’t say anything.”

Ultimately, only a full criminal investigation can determine the truth about Ohio ’04 and the death of Michael Connell. Robert Kennedy Jr., who sought Connell’s cooperation during an investigation into the election, believes the current administration should pursue the matter. “I think this is more serious than Watergate,” he says. “Watergate was essentially about winning the battle for public opinion. That’s why the break-in took place—to gather strategic information about Democratic strategy and dirt. But the electoral process remained intact. The Ohio vote undermines the very foundation stone of American democracy. There should be an official investigation. Otherwise this becomes a blueprint for how to steal an election from here to eternity.”

That may not be enough for Connell’s widow. When I first spoke to her on the phone, Heather Connell was adamant that her husband’s plane crash had been an accident, God’s will. But she is no longer so sure. “This is a messed-up case of whether Karl Rove threatened my husband or not,” she says. I ask her directly if she now believes her husband could have been murdered. She takes a deep drag of her cigarette and, choking back tears, says: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

[Pilotguy]

49. What is the source for this...

piece of information because it is certainly not in the NTSB report and really doesn't make any sense. The article does not cite a source for this and I think this claim is dubious.

"Seconds later there is a loud rushing sound as the cockpit bursts open and the engine goes haywire."

And

"Connell himself is not mentioned by name. Just the registration number of his plane, NP299N, which the agent confirms he had been sent to “neutralize.”

The tail number of the plane Connell was flying was N9299N, not NP299N.

[grantcart]

50. misuse of fair use provision

[Harley Jacobson]

52. not true.

the maxim magazine article was removed from maxim's website. it is no longer available on the internet, and is now public domain as long as no one profits from it.

[grantcart]

53. copyright is retained by the author and is not 'in the public domain' unless specific authorized by

The author. Has the authorized free public use without restriction?

[Harley Jacobson]

56. yes.

[99th_Monkey]

55. wow. thanks for this. do you have a link to it? nt

[Harley Jacobson]

57. it was removed from the maxim.com archives...

you can find more information here:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7652

[99th_Monkey]

59. Thanks nt

[haele]

27. Rove's a front man. He may be part of the Neo-Liberal/Con leadership, but he's not the head.

Follow the big money. That is where the "orders" are decided on. Rove is clever and cold, but he isn't really smart enough or patient enough - nor does he have enough money to have hold a serious power position in that organization for any length of time. -Gotta remember, money is their god and considered the source of their power. He's more of a trusted lieutenant type.

Haele

[orpupilofnature57]

36. " New World Order " is what your talking about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_(conspiracy_theory)

[Harley Jacobson]

38. read his biography on wikipedia

he has been corrupting the republican party since he was in college. he worked with nixon...actually taught nixon's people how to DO watergate.

[orpupilofnature57]

48. His mentor and fellow Misanthrope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater

[starroute]

51. There's a dandy description that H2O Man quoted here back in 2008

Originally from Rick Perlstein's Nixonland:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6728376

"Segretti turned to more willing recruits: fellow veterans of conservative campus politics. Political dirty tricks were the bread and meat of the young conservative movement that organized in the early sixties around the National Review and the Goldwater for President crusade. Young Americans for Freedom, Tom Charles Huston’s old outfit, for example, set up camp in a hotel for the 1961 conference of the National Student Association with a mimeograph machine, walkie-talkies, and a bevy of secret operatives who pretended to be strangers but identified themselves to one another by wearing suspenders – all funded with the help of Bill Rusher, National Review’s publisher and another former army intelligence officer – and took over the resolutions committee via a phoney ‘middle-of-the-road caucus.’ The Young Republican National Federation was shot through with so much chicanery that its 1963 convention turned into a chair-throwing brawl. College Republicans put on elections more rank than banana republics: here was where young operatives learned the black art of setting up ‘rotten boroughs’ – fake chapters – in order to control the national conventions.

"Then they brought their skills to the grown-ups’ game. One especially nasty operator was loaned by the College Republicans to the campaign to defeat the Democratic candidate for state treasurer in Illinois in 1970, Al Dixon. Dixon was having a formal reception to open his Chicago headquarters. This kid assumed an alias, volunteered for the campaign, stole the candidate’s stationary, and distributed a thousand fake invitations – they promised ‘free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing’ – at communes, rock concerts, and street corners where Chicago’s drunken hoboes congregated. The kid’s name was Karl Rove. The RNC soon hired him at $9,200 a year to give seminars on his techniques."

[lunasun]

69. wow I remember Al Dixon in IL ....did not know that

[orpupilofnature57]

29. Advisor to the prosecution in Sweden

Traitor in America, We should have put this MISANTHROPE in prison then .

[DeSwiss]

37. You're lookin baaaaaaackwaaaarrrds......

...which we don't do anymore, remember??

- K&R

[PDJane]

42. I don't, frankly, see why there would even be a question about this.

Rove is allied with the Bush bunch, and a lot of people the Bushes want gone have simply had inconvenient accidents...or come down with the CIA flu or died of gunshot wounds by their own hand....even if it's really unlikely that they could use a shotgun to do so.

[valerief]

43. Duh! YES! nt

[Harley Jacobson]

45. Recent Video of Rove Talking About This Subject

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/31/top_gop_strategist_karl_rove_loses

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

60. I say yes. Unless he can prove otherwise.

[diane in sf]

61. More likely had him murdered, Mike C. was controlling the private server farm the Repugs/Karl

ran the Ohio vote through in 2004.

I followed this stuff pretty closely at the time and here is my recollection:

Until a few days before the 2008 election Rove was predicting victory for McCain in his opinion column. McCain was running around telling everyone he was going to win the election in the "wee hours." Then just a few days before the election, Connell was subpoenaed. He was assassinated/suicided/dead before he could testify. I think that someone also told Rove he better not throw another election because he started predicting an Obama victory just 2-3days before the election.

[Harley Jacobson]

62. please explain more...

please elaborate and fill us in on what you know. thank you.

[AnnieK401]

64. This might be hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt

Last edited Sun Sep 2, 2012, 09:49 AM - Edit history (1)

but at the very least, along with his recent remark, this guy needs to be watched closely.

[Harley Jacobson]

66. that's why i posted this

"BOSS ROVE" the book comes out on Monday.

And there are many articles now coming out online about Rove.

He has been operating at a very high level within the GOP since Nixon.

[november3rd]

65. This is a very touchy subject

MCM emailed me back the other day, when I told him about Dashboard and the organizing effort to put Obama back in. He said that the GOP is doing it again, and that is where his efforts to reelect President Obama are focused: thwarting Rove's electronic vote-flipping machines in Ohio and elsewhere.

[Harley Jacobson]

67. more information please

the republican primaries were a great example of vote fixing. i watched it all happen on CNN...the fix was in for romney, and the GOP was honing its vote-fixing skills in places like Ohio and Mississippi.

[lunasun]

68. Oh yes and I am not kidding

just like the mob
he wouldn't take the fall and was gonna squeal
shouldn't have played with bad guys
that is how you can wind up dead after dirty deeds
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Rove's e-mails from the White House to the Justice Department, the FBI, the Pentagon, Congress and various federal regulatory agencies are obviously relevant to the factual issues that we intend to address in this case," Arnebeck wrote last week to the Attorney General. "We are concerned about reports that Mr. Rove not only destroyed e-mails, but also took steps to destroy the hard drives from which they had been sent."

In his email to Mukasey today, Arnebeck writes: "We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to 'take the fall' for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations."

"This appears to be in response to our designation of Rove as the principal perpetrator in the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim with respect to which we issued document hold notices last Thursday to you and to the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform," the Ohio attorney writes, before going on to link to The BRAD BLOG's coverage of his press conference last week and requesting "protection for Mr. Connell and his family from this reported attempt to intimidate a witness."

[coalition_unwilling]

72. Why is this claptrap at the head of the Politics 2012 forum? I think it

belongs in Creative Speculation.

Its presence here brings DU's general credibility into disrepute and makes us look like friggin' kooks.

Is that the image we wish to project 90 days before the most important election of most of our lifetimes?Conn

Let me put it another way: what single piece of evidence would prove to you once and for all that Karl Rove was NOT behind Connell's death? If there is no single piece of evidence that would 'falsify' your theory, it is bunk.

Remmeber Pasteur's maxim that 'fortune favors the well-prepared.' That's probably all that's going on here.

[Cooley Hurd]

75. Agreed, but not on the Connell crash. The Wellstone crash? Yes...

Wellstone's pilot flew into icing conditions. Connell's crash, on the other hand, is far more suspicious...

[Harley Jacobson]

77. here's why this post is relevant...

a new book is coming out about karl rove called, "Boss Rove."

karl rove has been up to political tricks within the GOP since nixon. he fixed the election in 2004 which put george w. bush back in the white house.

he is planning on fixing the election again this year. how do we know that? because there are more computerized voting booths being used this election season than ever before.

there is no doubt that the GOP is going to tamper with the results, and the election will probably go to romney due to how close the polls are currently showing the presidential race.

karl rove needs to be exposed now, in all ways.

[coalition_unwilling]

80. I'm not going to take the bait and engage on your terms, other than to repeat

my question from before:

Can you point to a single fact or set of facts that, once known, would cause you to conclude that Karl Rove did not murder Connell? If you cannot, then your theory fails the test of falsifiability and deserves no further serious scrutiny nor exposure on DU.

[Harley Jacobson]

85. who is karl rove?

are you saying that karl rove personally murdered mike collin?

that's not his style. but collin worked very closely with rove.

don't close your eyes to how low the GOP will stoop to fix the 2012 election.

this story about mike collin is about election fraud and fixing voting booths. that's karl rove's plan in 2012. if collin blew the whistle in 2008, there would be no chance for the GOP to win the white house this year...watch OHIO, FLORIDA and TEXAS this year.

[Cooley Hurd]

74. Wellstone? Really?

Is Rove master of the weather now?

[Harley Jacobson]

78. the wellstone crash...

karl rove financially backed wellstone's opponent before wellstone died.

rove "makes things happen" when he backs a political candidate and knows he cannot win in a fair vote.

karl rove put GW Bush into the governorship in texas; rove was behind rick perry - and so many other GOP candidates.

he is the "engineer" of the republican party.

[grantcart]

79. Also the wizard of gravity

[Harley Jacobson]

81. read the vanity fair article...

i think if you had a network of top politicos and $1 billion like karl rove, you might be considered powerful, too.

read the vanity fair article:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/09/karl-rove-gop-craig-unger

[grantcart]

82. Not going to waste my time

Outlandish claims require substantial proof.

What proof, what facts do you have that Rove was involved in cold blooded murder?

Now here are the facts that undermine that absurd charge;

While Rove is an effective public relations strategist and tactician (perhaps the best that the Republicans have ever had) there is no evidence that he has been effective in black bag operations.

His most famous is running the operation in South Carolina tagging McCain with having an illegitimate African American daughter. His fingerprints were all over it and he was revealed in a matter of days.

Then there was his silly attempt to jam the Democratic operations office in NH where he actually gave the operators the White House phone number to call if they got in trouble. Only the fact that they weren't able to identify the extension and that he payed off the participants was he able to avoid jail time.

Then there is his bumbling on the Plame affair. He was so inept that again he was on his way to jail and was called back to the grand jury 5 times and frankly the only reason that he wasn't prosecuted was that federal prosecutors are extremely jealous of their conviction rate and virtually never prosecute unless it is a slam dunk with a guaranteed conviction. Rove was just barely able to slither out of that one.

So yes Rove spends billions on buying television ads. Yes he is an evil fuck. There is one major element that you are forgetting. He is an obvious coward.

So no I don't believe that this slimly little piece of shit has the balls to actually participate in murder. Nor do I believe that there is any credible evidence that he has the operational coolness to carry it off.

There are other problems with the entire logic of it and that is if Rove were the murdering type why would Wellstone not only be at the top of the list but the only one on it.

Oh and here's a news break. Small private aircraft are dangerous to ride in.

Here is a list of hundreds of famous people who have died in small aviation crashes;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatalities_from_aviation_accidents

[Harley Jacobson]

84. why not get more information?

the vanity fair article features the new book, "Boss Rove."

do you think you have nothing left to learn about karl rove?

[babsbunny]

83. yes